Thursday, August 24, 2017

In early June, Teddy Teow, the schemer behind the MBI International (MBI) virtual money game Ponzi scheme scam, was arrested by the Ministry for Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism (the Malay acronym KPDNKK).

Words are Teddy Teow was arrested at a condo in Penang in the midst of shagging someone's wife. To know Teddy Teow, read Malaysian Digest here.

The Unspinners, in their late April posting here, suspected MBI is funding political slash fund for Lim Guan Eng and DAP Penang. It is the suspected conduit to channel the money abroad to a "safe house" in a money money centre, which could be Hong Kong.

Back when MBI and the owner were raided , RM177 million was frozen by KPDNKK. (read about it in MLM website here and The Star here).

Highly reliable source claimed that the period to freeze the money lapsed and it now under the jurisdiction of KPDNKK to hold the money in the midst of building a case against them.

A high official, a very high official, in KPDNKK seeked clearance from a higher authority and without giving the right and full briefing managed to trick into securing clearance to release the first tranche of the money to Teddy Teow and MBI.

The amount is small but words on the street is that there was a kickback of RM5 million paid to the "very" high official for securing the release.

The moment it is released the money disappeared within seconds out of the country.

The embarassing part is a neighbouring country contacted the local authority on Teddy Teow and MBI for alleged link to illegal drug trade. The suspicion is MBI money is invested in the, legally high risk but financially high return, drug trade.

It was improper of KPDNKK to unfreeze and returned the money to Teddy Teow and MBI in view of the suspected involvement in drugs.

Apparently, the "very" high official was called up to explain.

In the midst of the new revelation of the link to illegal drug trade, time expired on another set of the money of about RM70 million. Using the earlier mistaken release as excuse and for eventual blame, a Director in KPDNKK released the money.

The name of the Director will not be made known here because the line of power is unclear. Enforcement Director Datuk Mohd Roslan Mahayudin should be called up to explain as he is in charge of the raids.

Roslan has long been in charge of enforcement on consumer matter. A former reporter in her late 50s confided that he was around during her days as reporter. It is surprising that JPA can allow someone to stay at a position for so long hat he has formed his own empire within the Ministry.

The former reporter viewed him as rather dubious and Malay decribed it as "licik".

A common complain against him today by both media and government officials outside KPDNKK and including other enforcement officials is that he is uncooperative and arrogant. He tend to ignore requests from outside officials and give them a hard time.

As far back as 2014, this blog (read here) suspected Roslan was involved in sabotaging efforts by government to curb leakage of diesel and other subsidised essential goods.

He did delay tactics by doing smaller operations to allow the big ones to escape. Another trick up their sleeve was to negotiate the "lucrative smuggling haven" southern region to be under the control of KPDNKK and other agencies take charge of north and other areas.

There was also an internal syndicate in KPDNKK to sell seized goods at dirt cheap price and bribe paid by buyers. The son of a former "very high official" was suspected to be involved.

GST is not the only reason prices of goods shot up. The main one is civil servants responsible to enforce price control and abuses are corrupted too. They were and still being paid handsomely to look the other way and do token enforcement.

Subsidy system had to be removed due to the uncontrolled abuses that is costing the country in the tens of billions a year.

Retail business adds up to be big business and the attached smuggling activities are both lucrative and dangerous. The death of a former Deputy Director General of the Royals Customs few years ago is suspected to be linked to smugglers.